Sunday, October 29, 2017

Recent reads: "The Calgary Renaissance"

One of the
first things I noticed about The Calgary Renaissance, a collection of experimental fiction and poetry, is that
Alberta’s biggest city – the connective tissue that binds these authors – is rarely
relevant thematically. As an Ontario reader living on the outskirts of Toronto’s
cultural vacuum, I don’t gain much of an impression about the region’s pulse or
how authors interact with their shared environment. But that isn’t the book’s
mission. Instead, The Calgary Renaissance earns its bold title by forgoing geographical appraisals in favour of
juxtaposing many of its radiant and diverse voices in a direct bid for national
recognition.

It’s long
overdue. And in recognizing more of the thirty-two authors than expected, I
suspect The Calgary Renaissance doubles
as a consolidation of co-editor rob mclennan’s efforts to showcase westward
writers through his above/ground press
(from which I credit much of my exposure). For co-editor derek beaulieu, this
book serves as an extension of the role he has played as Calgary’s Poet
Laureate from 2014 to 2016 and, unofficially, before and since.

It’s an
impressive roster eclipsed by the quality of its content. Unfamiliar authors
make strong bids for my attention while familiar ones posit new sides of their
writing. Starting with the former camp, I enjoyed Susan Holbrook’s “What Is
Poetry” and “What Is Prose”, twin pillars of tongue-in-cheek onomatopoeia that
break open form for effect, not dissection. Here, the latter piece:

What Is
Prose

Prose has
wit,

war, hot
spies,

pirate
shows.

It has
powers.

A swisher
top,

wiser
pathos,

towers, a
ship,

parishes.
Two

IHOPs.
Waters

whose traps
I

sap, so
whiter

whites. Spa
or

showier
taps

spew hot
airs:

“Poet wash,
Sir?”

Posh
waiters

tow
Sharpies,

shower
pitas,

pestos
awhir,

pastries,
how!

How it
spears

trophies,
was

tops, was
heir

to Sears.
“Whip

Thor, asswipe!

Swap
heros!” it

whispers to
a

hipster.
Aw. So

worship a
set.

Another
late discovery for me is Braydon Beauleau, whose “In The Aurora” suite coaxes a
mercurial identity from an expanse of rich, natural imagery. The sense of
momentum and discovery in this poem is masterful, evolving at such a pace that
its cryptic meaning gets outshone by the chaos of its transformation. (Although
I do wonder: what happened to sections iii and v?)

Eschewing Beauleau’s densely
figurative constructions, Natalee Caple’s trio of poems entice with their
casual, shorn immediacy. “Packing for the Weekend (For Natalie Walschots)” is
literally a list of things to pack, but the items – some commonplace and
tangible (“my boxing gloves”), others absurd and impossible (“my piano-limbed
internet trolls”) – accumulate in ways that beg of the reader: what kind of
weekend is this, and what do we all carry around as metaphorical baggage?
Alternately, her poem “For Nicole Markotic” achieves a curious tension, her
language primitive in its directness but unencumbered by emotion or punctuation.

For Nicole
Markotic

In August
it rains and rains

I slosh
more wine into my brains

until I
breathe wine

You lick
the back of my knees

I touch
your fingers

propose we
build a bridge

be
minotaurs in alphabets

sew
triangles over scars

knit hymens
for all kinds of birds

I will
write you a slim letter

Someday

The poem
itself functions as that slim letter, simultaneously heavy and floating,
intimate but noncommittal.

Aside from
the surprise of reading new talents, the fun thing about literary collections
(whether they tackle a single author’s output or an entire scene’s) is the
freedom to browse the Table of Contents and choose your own launch-point. In
the case of The Calgary Renaissance,
I started with Jason Christie’s incendiary “This Poem Is a Ski Mask”, a
thoughtful dismantling of privilege and hypocrisy. Next up was Emily Ursuliak’s
“Removing the Shoe” which, despite its disjointed lines, retains the absorbing narrative
details of her prose. Afterwards I flipped to Sandy Pool’s “On Anatomical
Procedures”, a witty summary of clinical trials conducted on her acquaintances
that judge whether Pool is a good person, with variables like social events and
alcohol factored in. A skillful but lightweight palate cleanser after the gutting Undark: An Oratorio (Nightwood Editions). Such maneuvers felt akin to grazing from a delectable hors d’oeuvres
table.

For the
sake of brevity, I’ve omitted mention of many contributions here. But I’ve
omitted several more because, frankly, I didn’t respond to them – and that isn’t
a bad thing. Such an anthology welcomes us into Calgary’s talent pool but it
also allows fair-weather experimental poetry readers like myself to gauge and advance our comfort zones. Most of the authors I’ve discussed take moderate leaps without
(in my eyes) abandoning form or narrative altogether. But as I revisit this
collection from time to time, it stands to reason The Calgary Renaissance will further reward my interest in
the experimental spectrum.